bobf

Ooh! Hey, Bill; how do they tie in, or do they? Does PIA make the VPN plugin(?) redundant, do they conflict, do they collaborate to enhance protections or open additional functionalities? As you know, Rob Kearns & I have been having a lot of trouble trying to wrestle WIRES-X into submission at his place, where it works perfectly fine at mine...

Not sure what you're asking here, Bob. If you mean the article and Bill's presentation. The article mentions Opera's VPN client and Bill was doing a presentation on Opera.

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Does PIA make the VPN plugin(?) redundant, do they conflict, do they collaborate to enhance protections or open additional functionalities?

If you get PIA, you don't need to use the VPN plugin in Opera as they both provide VPN services. The VPN plugin in Opera will only provide a VPN for browser connections through Opera though, so if you need VPN encryption for other Internet-connected apps, you should use PIA or another service that provides a VPN client for the entire OS. I just tried using Opera in Linux with the VPN turned on and my PIA VPN client also on (it's always on except for Netflix) and it works fine. Of course, there will be an extra overhead to using both. A VPN inside a VPN! Even for me, I think that's overkill!

Note that Opera's VPN servers are possibly slower than commercial VPNs. These are speed tests done before and after turning on their VPN:

Before:

After:

PIA's VPN servers are fast. Some have been slow occasionally but have done lots of testing and usually, they're up with my normal network speed. And to be fair, I did a speed test before this with the VPN on and it showed 22 Mbps. But unless you're doing downloading, you're not going to notice the difference between 16/22 Mbps and 35 Mbps while surfing the web and can even stream Ultra HD videos over it which is just enough for 7.0 GB/hour if my calculations are correct.

Thanks Jason, for providing Bob some answers about the Opera browser, built in VPN and the PIA VPN.

Another thing to note about the Opera built in VPN, is that there are only a few Countries to choose from, for your choice of VPN location. I don;t believe Britain is available as a VPN location.PIA has many more VPN country locations to choose from.

In Bob's case though, the VPN country location is probably not an issue for what he is trying to get around, with Robert's setup.

In Bob's case though, the VPN country location is probably not an issue for what he is trying to get around, with Robert's setup.

Yeah, I think he thought he could use a VPN to get around their firewall which is preventing incoming data. As far as I've figured out, VPNs are great for drilling out from firewalls (like accessing websites that are blocked in certain countries) but for drilling in.